
\ PS 3525 
.A25 P7 
1914 




Copy 2 HE PRESENT HOUR 

PERCY MACKAYE 








r 



may 

ess a 
riirc7 la tj.x ^ji os;^eu iiisiaeiTie coveF. 
For each book kept over time a fine of 
ten cents a week will be imposed. 
Pen or pencil marks, or leaf-corners turn- 
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No book is to be lent out of the family 
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I 



B^ IPerc^ /IDaclRa^e 



The Canterbury Pilgrims. A Comedy. 

Jeanne d'Arc. A Tragedy. 

Sappho and Phaon. A Tragedy. 

Penris the Wolf. A Tragedy. 

A Garland to Sylvia. A Dramatic JReverie. 

The Scarecrow. A Tragedy of the Ludicrous. 

Yankjee Fantasies. Five One-Act Plays. 

Mater. An American Study in Comedy. 

Anti-Matrimony. A Satirical Comedy. 

To-MoRROw. A Play in Three Acts. 

A Thousand Years Ago. A Bomance of the Orient. 

Sanctuary. A Bird Masque. 

Saint Louis. A Civic Masque. 

The Sistine Eve, and Other Poems. 

Lincoln. A Centenary Ode. 

Uriel, and Other Poems. 

The Present Hour. A Book of Poems. 

The Playhouse and the Play. Essays, 

The Civic Theatre. 



Bt all :©ooft0ellcr0 



THE PRESENT HOUR 



•Th^>^o 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK . BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




From a photograph by Arnold Genthe. 



THE PRESENT HOUR 

a 13006 of ^oetnjs 



BY 

PERCY MACKAYE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1914 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1914, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1914. 



J. S. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



REPLACEMOT COPY. 



^7- 



THE VALIANT DEFENDERS 

OF CIVILIZATION 

THE BELGIANS 



PREFACE 

Posterity alone can correctly estimate and appor- 
tion the right and wrong of the great war in Europe. 

At the present hour, we who look on from neutral 
America can but judge the war's issues by the facts 
and arguments laid before us by the press and spokes- 
men of all parties in the conflict. 

By such evidence, the sympathies of our citizens, 
by overwhelming majority, are with the cause of the 
Allies. 

In thus sympathizing with the Allies, we do so, 
I believe, whole-heartedly in the faith (based on the 
declared policy of English leaders) that they are 
waging against militarism a fight to lessen world 
armament and the political oppression of small nar 
tions. If they win and the stipulations of peace 
should prove otherwise, our revulsion of feeling 
would surely be commensurate. 



PREFACE 



It is conceivable, though hardly probable, that 
future evidence may alter our judgment of the bel- 
ligerents. Our reasons remain open to conviction. 
But no future contingencies can, or should, stay us 
now from taking thought and expressing it. 

In view of the world-misery involved by the war, 
our reaction, while dispassionate, cannot possibly 
be unimpassioned. Not to feel its awful issues 
passionately would be uncivilized. 

Confronted by moral and social issues of a conflict 
the most poignant in history, it becomes for us — as 
neutrals, who alone may help to form untainted world- 
opinion — a pressing duty and privilege to express 
ourselves. 



PERCY MACKAYE. 



Cornish, New Hampshire, 
October, 1914. 



CONTENTS 
I. WAK 

PAOB 

Fight : The Tale of a Gunner 3 

The Conflict : Six Sonnets 29 

1. To William Watson in England .... 29 

2. American Neutrality 30 

3. Peace 31 

4. Wilson 32 

6. Kruppism 33 

6. The Real Germany 34 

The Lads of Liege 35 

Carnage : Six Sonnets 38 

1. Doubt 38 

2. The Great Negation 39 

3. Louvain 40 

4. Rheims 41 

5. Kultur 42 

6. Destiny 43 

The Muffled Drums 44 

Antwerp 46 

Magna Carta 47 

Men of Canada 50 

France 62 

Hauptmann 53 

Nietzsche 54 

The Child-Dancers 65 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Battlefields 67 

In Memoriam ......... 58 

A Prayer of the Peoples 60 

II. PEACE 

Panama Hymn 65 

goethals 68 

A Child at the Wicket 71 

Hymn for Equal Suffrage 74 

Lexington 76 

School 81 

The Player 89 

To Josephine Preston Peabody 92 

Prologue and Epilogue to a Bird Masque . . 94 

The Song Sparrow ........ 99 

To AN Upland Plover 101 

Rain Revery 103 

The Heart in the Jar 106 

NOTES 115 



THE PRESENT HOUR 

I 

WAR 



FIGHT 

The Tale of a Gunner ^ 

I 
Jock bit his mittens off and blew his thumbs ; 
He scraped the fresh sleet from the frozen sign : 
Men Wanted — Volunteers. Like gusts of brine 

He whiffed deliriums 
Of sound — the droning roar of rolling rolling drums 
And shrilling fifes, like needles in his spine, 
And drank, blood-bright from sunrise and wild shore. 

The wine of war. 

1 In commemoration of the last naval battle between English- 
speaking peoples. See note at end of volume, 

3 



THE PRESENT HOUR 



With ears and eyes he drank and dizzy brain 
Till all the snow danced red. The little shacks 
That lined the road of muffled hackmatacks 

Were roofed with the red stain. 
Which spread in reeling rings on icy-blue Champlain 
And splotched the sky like daubs of sealing-wax, 
That darkened when he winked, and when he stared 

Caught fire and flared. 

Men Wanted — Volunteers ! The village street, 
Topped by the slouching store and slim flagpole. 
Loomed grand as Rome to his expanding soul ; 

Grandly the rhythmic beat 
Of feet in file and flags and fifes and filing feet. 
The roar of brass and unremitting roll 
Of drums and drums bewitched his boyish mood — 

Till he hallooed. 

His strident echo stung the lake's wild dawn 

And startled him from dreams. Jock rammed his cap 



FIGHT 



And rubbed a numb ear with the furry flap, 

Then bolted like a faun, 
Bounding through shin-deep sleigh-ruts in his shaggy 

brawn. 
Blowing white frost-wreaths from red mouth agap 
Till, in a gabled porch beyond the store, 

He burst the door: 

"Mother!" he panted. "Hush! Your Pa ain't up; 
He's worser since this storm. What's struck ye so ? " 
"It's volunteers!" The old dame stammered "Oh!" 

And stopped, and stirred her sup 
Of morning tea, and stared down in the trembling cup. 
"They're musterin' on the common now." "I know" 
She nodded feebly; then with sharp surmise 

She raised her eyes : 

She raised her eyes, and poured their light on him 
Who towered glowing there — bright lips apart. 



6 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Cap off, and brown hair towsled. With quick smart 

She felt the room turn dim 
And seemed she heard, far off, a sound of cherubim 
Soothing the sudden pain about her heart. — 
How many a lonely hour of after-woe 

She saw him so I 



"Jock!" And once more the white lips murmured 

"Jock!" 
Her fingers slipped ; the spilling teacup fell 
And shattered, tinkling — but broke not the spell. 

His heart began to knock, 
Jangling the hollow rhythm of the ticking clock. 
"Mother, it's fight, and men are wanted!" "Well, 
Ah well, it's men may kill us women's joys. 

It's men — not boys ! " 

"I'm seventeen! I guess that seventeen — " 
" My little Jock ! " " Little ! I'm six-foot-one. 



FIGHT 



(Scorn twitched his lip) You saw me, how I skun 

The town last Halloween 
At wrasthn'." (Now the mother shifted tack.) " But 

Jean ? 
You won't be leavin' Jean?'' "I guess a gun 
Won't rattle her^ He laughed, and turned his 
head. 
His face grew red. 



"But if it doos — a gal don't understand: 

It's fight!" "Jock boy, your Pa can't last much 

more, 
And who's to mind the stock — to milk and chore ? " 

Jock frowned and gnawed his hand. 
"Mother, it's mm must mind the stock — our own 

born land. 
And lick the invaders." Slowly in the door 
Stubbed the old worn-out man. "Woman, let be! 

It's liberty: 



8 THE PRESENT HOUR 

"It's struck him like fork-lightnin' in a pine. 

I felt it, too, like that in Seventy-six; 

And now, if 'twa'n't for ereepin' pains and cricks 

And this one leg o' mine, 
I'd holler young Jerusalem like him, and jine 
The fight; but fight don't come from burnt-out 

wicks; 
It comes from fire." "Mebbe," she said, "it comes 

From fifes and drums." 



"Dad, all the boys are down from the back hills. 
The common's cacklin' like hell's cocks and hens; 
There's swords and muskets stacked in the cow pens 

And knapsacks in the mills; 
They say at Isle aux Noix redcoats are holding 

drills. 
And we're to build a big fleet at Vergennes. 
Dad, can't I go ? " "I reckon you 're a man : 

Of course you can. 



FIGHT 9 



"I'll do the chores to home, you do 'em tharl" 
"Dad!" — "Lad!'' The men gripped hands and 

gazed upon 
The mother, when the door flew wide : There shone 

A young face like a star, 
A gleam of bitter-sweet 'gainst snowy islands far, 
A freshness, like the scent of cinnamon, 
Tingeing the air with ardor and bright sheen. 

Jock faltered: "Jean!" 

"Jock, don't you hear the drums ? I dreamed all night 
I heard 'em, and they woke me in black dark. 
Quick, ain't you comin'? Can't you hear 'em? 
Hark! 

The men-folks are to fight. 
I wish I was a man!" Jock felt his throat clutch 

tight. 
" Men-folks ! " It lit his spirit like a spark 
Flashing the pent gunpowder of his pride. 

" Come on ! " he cried. 



10 THE PRESENT HOUR 

*' Here — wait ! " The old man stumped to the back 

wall 
And handed down his musket. "You'll want this; 
And mind what game you're after, and don't miss. 

Goodbye: I guess that's all 
For now. Come back and get your duds." Jock, 

looming tall 
Beside his glowing sweetheart, stooped to kiss 
The little shrunken mother. Tiptoe she rose 

And clutched him — close. 



In both her twisted hands she held his head 
Clutched in the wild remembrance of dim years — 
A baby head, suckling, half dewed with tears; 

A tired boy abed 
By candlelight ; a laughing face beside the red 
Log-fire ; a shock of curls beneath her shears — 
The bright hair falling. Ah, she tried to smother 

Her wild thoughts. — " Mother 



FIGHT 11 



"Mother!" he stuttered. "Baby Jock!" she 

moaned 
And looked far in his eyes. — And he was gone. 
The porch door banged. Out in the blood-bright 

dawn 
All that she once had owned — 
Her heart's proud empire — passed, her life's dream 

sank unthroned. 
With hands still reached, she stood there staring, wan. 
"Hark, woman!" said the bowed old man, "What's 

tolling?" 
Drums — drums were rolling. 



n 



Shy wings flashed in the orchard, glitter, glitter; 
Blue wings bloomed soft through blossom-colored 

leaves. 
And Phoebe! Phoebe! whistled from gray eaves 



12 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Through water-shine and twitter 
And spurt of flamey green. All bane of earth and 

bitter 
Took life and tasted sweet at the glad reprieves 
Of Spring, save only in an old dame's heart 

That grieved apart. 



Crook-back and small, she poled the big wellsweep : 

Creak went the pole; the bucket came up brim- 
ming. 

On the bright water lay a cricket swimming 
Whose brown legs tried to leap 

But, draggling, twitched and foundered in the circling 
deep. 

The old dame gasped; her thin hand snatched him, 
skimming. 

" Dear Lord, he's drowned ! " she mumbled with dry 
lips: 
"The ships! the ships I" 



FIGHT 13 



Gently she laid him in the sun and dried 

The little dripping body. Suddenly 

Rose-red gleamed through the budding apple-tree 

And "Look! a letter !'' cried 
A laughing voice, "and lots of news for us inside!'* 
"How's that, Jean? News from Jock! Where — 
where is he?" 

"Down in Vergennes — the shipyards." "Ships I 
Ah, no! 
It can't be so." 

"He's goin' to fight with guns and be a tar. 

See here : he's wrote himself. The post was late. 

He couldn't write before. The ship is great I 

She's built, from keel to spar. 
And called the Saratoga; and Jock's got a scar 
Already-" "Scar?" the mother quavered. 

"Wait," 
Jean rippled, "let me read." "Quick, then, my dear. 

He'll want to hear — 



14 THE PRESENT HOUR 

"Jockos Pa: I guess we'll find him in the yard. 
He ain't scarce creepin' round these days, poor Dan ! " 
She gripped Jean's arm and stumbled as they ran. 

And stopped once, breathing hard. 
Around them chimney-swallows skimmed the sheep- 
cropped sward 
And yellow hornets hummed. — The sick old man 
Stirred at their steps, and muttered from deep muse : 

"Well, Ma: what news?" 



" From Jockie — there's a letter ! " In his chair 
The bowed form sat bolt upright. " What's he say ? " 
"He's wrote to Jean. I guess it's boys their way 

To think old folks don't care 
For letters." "Girl, read out." Jean smoothed her 

wilding hair 
And sat beside them. Out of the blue day 
A golden robin called; across the road 

A heifer lowed; 



FIGHT 15 



And old ears listened while youth read: "'Friend 

Jean, 
Vergennes : here's where we've played a Yankee trick. 
I'm layin' in my bunk by Otter Crick 

And scribblin' you this mean 
Scrawl for to tell the news — what-all I've heerd and 

seen : 
Jennie, we've built a ship, and built her slick — 
A swan ! — a seven hundred forty tonner, 

And I'm first gunner. 



" * You ought to seen us launch her t'other day I 
Tell Dad we've christened her for a fight of hisn 
He fought at Saratoga. Now just listen ! 

She's twice as big, folks say. 
As Perry's ship that took the prize at Put-in Bay; 
Yet forty days ago, hull, masts and mizzen. 
The whole of her was growin', live and limber. 

In God's green timber. 



16 THE PRESENT HOUR 

" ' I helped to fell her main-mast back in March. 
The woods was snowed knee-deep. She was a won- 
der: 
A straight white pine. She fell like roarin' thunder 

And left a blue-sky arch 
Above her, bustin' all to kindlin's a tall larch. — 
Mebbe the scart jack-rabbits skun from under! 
Us boys hoorayed, and me and every noodle 

Yelled Yankee-Doodle! 



"'My, how we haw'd and gee'd the big ox-sledges 
Haulin* her long trunk through the hemlock dells, 
A-bellerin' to the tinkle-tankle bells, 

And blunted our ax edges 
Hackin* new roads of ice 'longside the rocky ledges. 
We stalled her twice, but gave the oxen spells 
And yanked her through at last on the home-clearin*. — 

Lord, wa'n't we cheerin'! 



FIGHT 17 



"'Since then I've seen her born, as you might say: 
Born out of fire and water and men's sweatin', 
Blast-furnace rairin' and red anvils frettin* 

And sawmills, night and day, 
Screech-owlin' like 'twas Satan's nimhouse run away 
Smellin' of tar and pitch. But I'm forgettin' 
The man that's primed her guns and paid her score : 

The -Commodore. 

"'Macdonough — he's her master, and she knows 
His voice, like he was talkin' to his hound. 
There ain't a man of her but ruther'd drownd 

Than tread upon his toes; 
And yet with his red cheeks and twinklin' eyes, a rose 
Ain't friendlier than his looks be. When he's round. 
He makes you feel like you're a gentleman 

American. 

"'But I must tell you how we're hidin' here. 
This Otter Crick is like a crook-neck jug 



18 THE PRESENT HOUR 

And we're inside. The redcoats want to plug 

The mouth, and cork our beer; 
So last week Downie sailed his British lake-fleet near 
To fill our channel, but us boys had dug 
Big shore intrenchments, and our ^batteries 

Stung 'em like bees 

"*Till they skedaddled whimperin* up the lake; 
But while the shots was flyin', in the scrimmage, 
I caught a ball that scotched my livin' image. — 

Now Jean, for Sam Hill's sake. 
Don't let-on this to Mother, for you know she'd make 
A deary-me-in' that would last a grim age. 
'Tain't much, but when a feller goes to war 

What's he go for 

" ' If 'tain't to fight, and take his" chances ? ' " Jean 
Stopped and looked down. The mother did not speak. 
"Go on," said the old man. Flush tinged her cheek. 
"Truly I didn't mean — 



FIGHT 19 



There ain't much more. He says: 'Goodbye now, 

little queen; 
We're due to sail for Plattsburgh this day week. 
Meantime I'm hopin' hard and takin' stock. 
Your obedient — Jock.' " 

The girl's voice ceased in silence. Glitter, glitter, 

The shy wings flashed through blossom-colored 

leaves, 
And Phoebe! Phoebe! whistled from gray eaves 

Through water-shine and twitter 
And spurt of flamey green. But bane of thought is 

bitter. 
The mother's heart spurned May's sweet make- 
believes, 
For there, through falling masts and gaunt ships 
looming. 
Guns — guns were booming. 



20 THE PRESENT HOUR 

III 

Plattsburgh — and windless beauty on the bay ; 
Autumnal morning and the sun at seven : 
Southward a wedge of wild ducks in the heaven 

Dwindles, and far away • 

Dim mountains watch the lake, where lurking for their 

prey 
Lie, with their muzzled thunders and pent levin. 
The warships — Eagle, Preble, Saratoga, 

Ticonderoga. 

And now a little wind from the northwest 

Flutters the trembling blue with snowy flecks. 
A gunner, on Macdonough's silent decks. 

Peers from his cannon's rest. 
Staring beyond the low north headland. Crest on crest 
Behind green spruce-tops, soft as wildfowls' necks. 
Glide the bright spars and masts and whitened wales 

Of bellying sails. 



FIGHT 21 



Rounding, the British lake-birds loom in view 
Ruffling their wings in silvery arrogance : 
Chubb, Linnet, Finch, and lordly Confiance 

Leading with Downie's crew 
The line. — With long booms swung to starboard they 

heave to, 
Whistling their flock of galleys who advance 
Behind, then toward the Yankees, four abreast, 

Tack landward, west. 



Landward the watching townsfolk strew the shore; 
Mist-banks of human beings blur the bluffs 
And blacken the roofs, like swarms of roosting 
choughs. 

Waiting the cannon's roar 
A nation holds its breath for knell of Nevermore 
Or peal of life : this hour shall cast the sloughs 
Of generations — and one old dame's joy : 

Her gunner boy. 



22 THE PRESENT HOUR 

One moment on the quarter deck Jock kneels 
Beside his Commodore and fighting squad. 
Their heads are bowed, their prayers go up toward 
God — 

Toward God, to whom appeals 
Still rise in pain and mangling wrath from blind 

ordeals 
Of man, still boastful of his brother's blood. — 
They stand from prayer. Swift comes and silently 

The enemy. 

Macdonough holds his men, alert, devout : 
"He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea 
Driven with the wind. Behold the ships, that be 

So great, are turned about 
Even with a little helm." Jock tightens the blue 

clout 
Around his waist, and watches casually 
Close-by a game-cock, in a coop, who stirs 

And spreads his spurs. 



FIGHT 23 



Now, bristling near, the British war-birds swoop 
Wings, and the Yankee Eagle screams in fire; 
The English Linnet answers, aiming higher. 

And crash along Jock's poop 
Her hurtling shot of iron crackles the game-cock's coop, 
Where lo ! the ribald cock, like a town crier. 
Strutting a gunslide, flaps to the cheering crew — 

Yankee-doodle-doo ! 



Boys yell, and yapping laughter fills the roar: 
" You bet we'll do 'em ! " " You're a prophet, cocky ! " 
"Hooray, old rooster!" "Hip, hip, hip!" cries 
Jockie. 

Calmly the Commodore 
Touches his cannon's fuse and fires a twenty-four. 
Smoke belches black. "Huzza! That's blowed 'em 

pocky ! '* 
And Downie's men, like pins before the bowling. 

Fall scatter-rolling. 



24 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Boom! flash the long guns, echoed by the galleys. 
The Confiance, wind-baffled in the bay, 
With both her port bow-anchors torn away, 

Flutters, but proudly rallies 
To broadside, while her gunboats range the water-alleys. 
Then Downie grips Macdonough in the fray, 
And double-shotted from his roaring flail 

Hurls the black hail. 

The hail turns red, and drips in the hot gloom. 
Jock snuffs the reek and spits it from his mouth 
And grapples with great winds. The winds blow south. 

And scent of lilac bloom 
Steals from his mother's porch in his still sleeping room. 
Lilacs ! — But now it stinks of blood and drouth ! 
He staggers up, and stares at blinding light : 

"God! This is fight!" 

Fight ! — The sharp loathing retches in his loins ; 
He gulps the black air, like a drowner swimming, 



FIGHT 25 



Where little round suns in a dance go rimming 

The dark with golden coins : 
Round him and round the splintering masts and jangled 

quoins 
Reel, rattling, and overhead he hears the hymning — 
Lonely and loud — of ululating choirs 

Strangling with wires. 

Fight ! — But no more the roll of chanting drums, 
The fifing flare, the flags, the magic spume 
Filling his spirit with a wild perfume; 

Now noisome anguish numbs 
His sense, that mocks and leers at monstrous vacuums. 
Whang! splits the spanker near him, and the boom 
Crushes Macdonough, in a jumbled wreck. 

Stunned on the deck. 

No time to glance where wounded leaders lie. 
Or think on fallen sparrows in the storm — 
Only to fight! The prone commander's form 
Stirs, rises stumblingly 



26 THE PRESENT HOUR 

And gropes where, under shrieking grape and musketry, 
Men's bodies wamble like a mangled swarm 
Of bees. He bends to sight his gun again, 
Bleeding, and then — 



Oh, out of void and old oblivion 

And reptile slime first rose Apollo's head : 

And God in likeness of Himself, 'tis said. 

Created such an one. 
Now shaping Shakspere's forehead, now Napoleon, 
Various, by infinite invention bred. 
In His own image moulding beautiful 

The human skull. 



Jock lifts his head; Macdonough sights his gun 
To fire — but in his face a ball of flesh, 
A v/hizzing clod, has hurled him in a mesh 

Of tangled rope and tun, 
While still about the deck the lubber clod is spun 



FIGHT 27 



And, bouncing from the rail, lies in a plesh 
Of oozing blood, upstaring eyeless, red — 
A gunner's head. 

Above the ships, enormous from the lake, 
Rises a wraith — a phantom dim and gory, 
Lifting her wondrous limbs of smoke and glory; 

And little children quake 
And lordly nations bow their foreheads for her sake. 
And bards proclaim her in their fiery story; 
And in her phantom breast, heartless, unheeding. 

Hearts — hearts are bleeding. 

IV 

Macdonough lies with Downie in one land. 
Victor and vanquished long ago were peers. 
Held in the grip of peace an hundred years 

England has laid her hand 
In ours, and we have held (and still shall hold) the band 
That makes us brothers of the hemispheres; 



28 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Yea, still shall keep the lasting brotherhood 
Of law and blood. 

Yet one whose terror racked us long of yore 
Still wreaks upon the world her lawless might: 
Out of the deeps again the phantom Fight 

Looms on her wings of war, 
Sowing in armed camps and fields her venomed spore, 
Embattling monarch's whim against man's right, 
Trampling with iron hoofs the blooms of time 

Back in the slime. 

We, who from dreams of justice, dearly wrought. 
First rose in the eyes of patient Washington, 
And through the molten heart of Lincoln won 

To liberty forgot. 
Now, standing lone in peace 'mid titans strange dis- 
traught. 
Pray much for patience, more — God's will be done ! — 
For vision and for power nobly to see 

The world made free. 



THE CONFLICT: Six Sonnets 
[August, 1914] 
I 
TO WILLIAM WATSON IN ENGLAND 
Singer of England's ire across the sea, 
Your austere voice, electric from the deep. 
Speaks our own yearning, and our spirits sweep 
To Europe's allied honor. — Painfully, 
Bowed with a planet's lonely burden, we 
Held our hot hearts in leash, but now they leap 
Their ban, like young hounds belling from their keep, 
To bait the Teuton wolf of tyranny. 

What! Would he throw us sops of sugared art 

And poisoned commerce, snarling: "So! lie still 

Till I have shown my fangs, and torn the heart 

Of half the world, and gorged my sanguine fill ! " — 

Now, England, let him see: Rage as he will. 

He cannot tear our plighted souls apart. 

29 



30 THE PRESENT HOUR 

II 

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY 

How shall we keep an armed neutrality 
With our own souls ? Our souls belie our lips. 
That seek to hold our passion in eclipse 
And hide the wound of our sharp sympathy, 
Saying: "One's neighbor differs; he might be 
Kindled to wrath, were one to wield the whips 
Of truth." — Great God ! A red Apocalypse 
Flames on the blinded world : and what do we ? 

Peace! do we cry? Peace is the godlike plan 

We love and dedicate our children to; 

Yet England's cause is ours : The rights of man, 

Which little Belgium battles for anew. 

Shall we recant ? No ! — Being American, 

Our souls cannot keep neutral and keep true. 



THE CONFLICT 31 

III 

PEACE 

Peace ! — But there is no peace. To hug the thought 

Is but to clasp a lover who thinks lies. 

Go : look your earnest neighbor in the eyes 

And read the answer there. Peace is not bought 

By distance from the fight. Peace must be fought 

And bled for : 'tis a dream whose horrid price 

Is haggled for by dread realities; 

Peace is not paid till dreamers are distraught. 

Would we not close our ears against these ills. 
Urging our hearts: "Be calm! America 
Is called upon to rebuild a world." — But ah ! 
How shall we nobly build with neutral wills? 
Can we be calm while Belgian anguish shrills? 
Or would we crown with peace — Caligula ? 



32 THE PRESENT HOUR 

IV 

WILSON 

Patience — but peace of heart we cannot choose 
Nor would he wish us cravenly to keep 
Aloof in soul, who — large in statesmanship 
And justice — sent our ships to Vera Cruz. 
Patience must wring our hearts, while we refuse 
To launch our country on that crimson deep 
Which breaks the dikes of Europe, but we sleep 
Watchful, still waiting by the awful fuse. 

Wisdom he counsels, and he counsels well 
Whose patient fortitude against the fret 
And sneer of time has stood inviolable. 
We love his goodness and will not forget. 
With him we pause beside the mouth of hell : — 
The wolf of Europe has not triumphed yet. 



THE CONFLICT 33 

V 

KRUPPISM 

Crowned on the twilight battlefield, there bends 
A crooked iron dwarf, and delves for gold, 
Chuckling : " One hundred thousand gatlings — sold ! " 
And the moon rises, and a moaning rends 
The mangled living, and the dead distends, 
And a child cowers on the chartless wold. 
Where, searching in his safety-vault of mold, 
The kobold kaiser cuts his dividends. 

We, who still wage his battles, are his thralls 
And dying do him homage ; yea, and give 
Daily our living souls to be enticed 
Into his power. So long as on war's walls 
We build engines of death that he may live. 
So long shall we serve Krupp instead of Christ. 



34 THE PRESENT HOUR 

VI 

THE REAL GERMANY 

Bismarck — or rapt Beethoven with his dreams : 

Ah, which was blind ? Or which bespoke his race ? - 

That breed which nurtured Heine's haunting grace, 

And Goethe, mastering Olympic themes 

Of meditation, Mozart's golden gleams. 

And Leibnitz charting realms of time and space, 

Great-hearted Schiller, and that fairy brace 

Of brothers who first trailed the goblin streams. 

Bismarck for these builded an iron tomb. 

And clanged the door, and turned a kaiser's key; 

And simple folk, that once danced merrily 

Their May-ring rites, march now in roaring gloom 

Toward that renascent dawn when the black womb 

Of buried guns gives birth to Germany. 



THE LADS OF LIEGE 

[" Horum omnium fortissimi sunt BelgoB." — Caesar's 
" Commentaries "] 

The lads of Liege, beyond our eyes 
They lie where beauty's laurels be — 
With lads of old Thermopylae, 

Who stayed the storming Persians. 

The lads of Liege, on glory's field 
They clasp the hands of Roland's men, 
Who lonely faced the Saracen 
Meeting the dark invasion. 

The lads — the deathless lads of Liege, 

They blazon through our living world 

Their land — the little land that hurled 

Olympian defiance. 
35 



36 THE PRESENT HOUR 

"Now make us room, now let us pass; 
Our monarch suffers no delay. 
To stand in mighty Caesar's way 
Beseems not Lilliputians." 

" We make no room ; you shall not pass, 
For freedom says your monarch nay ! 
And we have stood in Caesar's way 
Through freedom's generations. 

"And here we stand till freedom fall 
And Caesar cry, ere we succumb. 
Once more his horum omnium 
Fortissimi sunt BelgoB." 

The monarch roars an iron laugh 
And cries on God to man his guns; 
But Belgian mothers bore them sons 
Who man the souls within them: 



THE LADS OF LIEGE 



They bar his path, they hold their pass, 
They bJaze in glory of the Gaul 
Till Caesar cries again "Of all 
The bravest are the Belgians!" 

O lads of Liege, brave lads of Liege, 
Your souls through glad Elysium 
Go chanting: horum omnium 
Fortissimi sunt Belgos! 



37 



CARNAGE: Six Sonnets 

4 

[September, 1914] 
I 
DOUBT 
So thin, so frail the opalescent ice 
Where yesterday, in lordly pageant, rose 
The monumental nations — the repose 
Of continents at peace ! Realities 
Solid as earth they seemed ; yet in a trice 
Their bastions crumbled in the surging floes 
Of unconceivable, inhuman woes, 
Gulfed in a mad, unmeaning sacrifice. 

We, who survive that world-quake, cower and start, 

Searching our hidden souls with dark surmise : 

So thin, so frail — is reason ? Patient art — . 

Is it all a mockery, and love all lies? 

Who sees the lurking Hun in childhood's eyes? 

Is hell so near to every human heart? 
38 



CARNAGE 39 



II 

THE GREAT NEGATION 

When that great-minded man, Sir Edward Grey, 

Said to the hypocritic ' prince of peace ' : 

"Let us confer, who hold the destinies 

Of Europe, ere the tempest breaks, and stay 

Its carnage ! " the proud despot answered nay, 

And by that great negation loosed the seas 

And winds of multitudinous miseries 

To rage around his empire for their prey. 

He might have uttered "Peace": Peace would have 

been. 
He might have abdicated ere he fought 
For such Satanic empire; but to win 
Power he refused. Therefore a rankling thought 
Festers henceforth with that refusaFs sin : — 
He might have saved the world, and he would not. 



40 THE PRESENT HOUR 



III 

LOUVAIN 

Serene in beauty's olden lineage, 

Calm as the star that hears the Angelus toll, 

Louvain — the scholar's crypt, the artist's goal. 

The cloistral shrine of hallowed pilgrimage « 

Rapt in the dreams of many an ardent age, 

Louvain, the guileless city of man's soul, 

Is blotted from the world — a bloodied scroll, 

Ravaged to sate a drunken Teuton's rage. 

His lust shall have its laurel. That red sword 
He ravished with. Time's angel shall again 
Grasp to sere himy and deify him Lord 
Of Infamy; yea, brand him with its stain 
Naked in night, abhorrent and abhorr'd. 
Where the dead hail him William of Louvain ! 



CARNAGE 41 



IV 

RHEIMS 

Apollo mourns another Parthenon 

In ruins ! — Is the God of Love awake ? 

And we — must we behold the world's heart break 

For peace and beauty ravished, and look on 

Dispassionate ? — Rheims' gloried fane is gone : 

Not by a planet's rupture, nor the quake 

Of subterranean titans, but to slake 

The vengeance of a Goth Napoleon. 

O Time, let not the anguish numb or pall 

Of that remembrance! Let no callous heal 

Our world-wound, till our kindled pities call 

The parliament of nations, and repeal 

The vows of war. Till then, pain keep us thrall I 

More bitter than to battle — is to feel. 



42 THE PRESENT HOUR 



V 

KULTUR 

If men must murder, pillage, sack, despoil, 
Let it not be (lest angels laugh) in the name 
Of sacred Culture. Vulcan still goes lame 
Though servile Muses poultice him with oil 
Of sleek Hypocrisy. They waste their toil 
Whose boast of light and sweetness takes its claim 
From deeds of night and wormwood, which defame 
Fair Culture's shrine and make her gods recoil. 

No; let the imperial Visigoth put off 

His borrowed toga, boast aloud his slain 

In naked savagery, and make his scoff 

Of Attic graces. So when once again 

He asks for Culture's crown, 'twill be enough 

To answer him : Once Rheims was — and Louvain ! 



CARNAGE 43 



VI 

DESTINY 

We are what we imagine, and our deeds 
Are born of dreaming. Europe acts to-day 
Epics that little children in their play 
Conjured, and statesmen murmured in their creeds; 
In barrack, court and school were sown those seeds. 
Like Dragon's teeth, which ripen to affray 
Their sowers. Dreams of slaughter rise to slay, 
And fate itself is stuff that fancy breeds. 

Mock, then, no more at dreaming, lest our own 

Create for us a like reality ! 

Let not imagination's soil be sown 

With armed men but justice, so that we 

May for a world of tyranny atone 

And dream from that despair — democracy. 



THE MUFFLED DRUMS 

For brothers laid in blood, 

For lovers sundered, 
Defeated motherhood 

And manhood plundered — 
We moan, moan the faith of man forgotten. 

For human vision bleared 

And childhood bleeding, 
For ripening harvests sered 

Before the seeding — 
We mourn, mourn the beauty unbegotten. 

We were the wanton ones 

In old wines sunken, 
Who sent the nations' sons 

Forth, reeling drunken 

With blare and rhythm of war's ruthless glory. 
44 



THE MUFFLED DRUMS 45 

Now in our pulse no more 

The old wines quicken. 
For the bannered glory of war 

Trails draggled and stricken, 
And the blood-red beast crawls home, blinded and 
hoary : 

But we are the beating hearts 

Of women, whose yearning 
Shall harass the beast with darts 

Of their myriad burning 
Till the Angel of God remould him — an image human. 

Yea, we are the chanting wills 

Of women, whose sorrow 
Rebels at the age-borne ills 

Of a man-built morrow. 
And we chant, chant the world redeemed by Woman. 



ANTWERP 1 

Towers — eternal towers against the sky : 
Dawn-touched, noon-flamed, night-mantled and moon- 
flecked ! 
The tenuous dreams of man, the architect. 
Imagining in stone what may not die 
Though man, the anarchist, dream enginery 
For its destruction : towers of intellect. 
Towers of aspiration — torn and wrecked, 
Profaned by robber sacrilege : ah, why ? 

Reason shall ask, and answer shall be given; 

Justice shall ask, and deal to those insane 

Their dark asylums, but to those — the vain 

Of lustful power, how shall their souls be shriven ? — 

They shall be raised on infamy's renown 

And from their towers of tyranny hurled down. 



1 See note at end of volume. 
46 



MAGNA CARTA 

Magna Carta ! Magna Carta ! 

English brothers, we have borne it 

On our banners down the ages. — 

Who shall scorn it ? 

Bitter fought-for, blood-emblazoned 

With the fadeless gules of freedom, 

Interbound with precious pages — 

English brothers, we who shrine it 

In our common heart of hearts. 

Think you we can see a monarch, 

Tyrant-sceptred, sanguine-shod. 

Seek to rend it and malign it : 

We whose sires made him sign it — 

Him who deemed him next to God ! 

We who dreamed our world forever 

Purged and rid 

Of his spectre — think you, brothers, 
47 



48 THE PRESENT HOUR 

We can watch this ghost, resurgent, 
Sweep his servile hordes toward England, 
And stand silent ? — God forbid ! 

Magna Carta ! Magna Carta ! 
Brother freemen, we who bear it 
Starward — shall we see him tear it ? 
Fool or frantic. 
Let him dare it ! 
If he reach across the Channel 
He shall touch across the Atlantic : — 
Scrolled with new and olden annal, 
Bitter fought-for, blood-emblazoned 
With the fadeless gules of freedom. 
We will hand him — Magna Carta ! 
Yea, once more shall make him sign it 
Where the centuries refine it, 
Till his serfs, who now malign it. 
Are made sick of him, and free 
Even as we. 



MAGNA CARTA 49 



So, if ghostly through the sea-mist. 
You behold his Mediaeval 
Falcon face peer violating — 
Lo, with quills and Magna Carta 
(Sharpened quills and Magna Carta) 
In a little mead near London, 
English brothers, we are waiting ! 



MEN OF CANADA 

Men of Canada, 

Fellow Americans, 
Proud our hearts beat for you over the border: 

Proud of the fight you wage. 

Proud of your valiant youth 
Sailing to battle for freedom and order. 

On our own battlefields 
Many's the bout we had — 

Yankee, Canadian, redcoat and ranger; 
But our old brotherhood. 
Staunch through the centuries. 

Shouts in our blood now to share in your danger. 

Ah, it's a weary thing 

Waiting and watching here. 

Numbing ourselves to a frozen neutraHty: 

Yet, in a world at war, 

'Tis our good part to keep 

Patient to forge the strong peace of finality. 

50 



MEN OF CANADA 51 



Though, then, our part be Peace, 

Yet our free fighting souls 
League with your own 'gainst the world-lust of Vandals ; 

Yea, in the dreadful night, 

We, with your women, weep 
And for your shroudless dead burn our shrine candles. 

So, by the gunless law 

Of our sane borderline, 
By our souls' faith, that no border can sever. 

Freedom ! — now may your fight. 

Waging the death of war. 
Silence the demons of cannon forever ! 

Kin-folk of Canada, 

So may your allied arms 
Smite with his legions the Lord of Disorder ! 

God speed your noble cause ! 

God save your gallant sons ! 
Would we might sail with them — over the border I 



FRANCE 

Half artist and half anchorite. 

Part siren and part Socrates, 
Her face — alluring fair, yet recondite — 

Smiled through her salons and academies. 

Lightly she wore her double mask, 
Till sudden, at war^s kindling spark. 

Her inmost self, in shining mail and casque. 
Blazed to the world her single soul — Jeanne d' Arc ! 



52 



HAUPTMANN 

Jean Christophe called to him out of the night — 
Out of the storm and dark of Europe's hate. 
Crying : " Where art thou, Hauptmann, who so late 
Loomed as a rugged tower of human right ? 
Flame to the world thy lonely beacon-light 
Of love for alien hearths laid desolate I " — 
In answer rolled a voice infuriate 
Hoarse with the fog of racial scorn and spite : 

" Here am 1 1 — Let them perish I '* And hell laughed 
To hear that voice — which once was wont to soar 
With Hannele to heaven, and starward waft 
The souls of simple weavers — rasp with war ; 
Yea, laughed to watch that tower's heroic shaft 
Fall crumbling on the beaconless world shore. 



53 



NIETZSCHE 

Some worshipped and some bantered, when 
The prophets of the drawing room 
Gossiped of Jesus Christ his doom 

Under the reign of Supermen, 

And how the Christian world would quake 

To hear what Zarathustra spake. 

Lo, Zarathustra's voice has spoken : 
And they, who use a mad bard's song 
To vindicate a tyrant's wrong. 

Point to the staring dead for token 

Of their triumphant creed, enshrined 

In temples of the Teuton mind. 

The raving dog-star hath his season : 
But when the light beyond our death 
Leads back again from Nazareth 

The holy star of human reason — 

Then will philosophy no more 

Be servile to the Muse of War. 
54 



THE CHILD-DANCERS 1 

A bomb has fallen over Notre Dame : 
Germans have burned another Belgian town: 
Russians quelled in the east: England in qualm: 

I closed my eyes, and laid the paper down. 

Gray ledge and moor-grass and pale bloom of light 

By pale blue seas ! 

What laughter of a child world-sprite, 

Sweet as the horns of lone October bees. 

Shrills the faint shore with mellow, old delight? 

What elves are these 

In smocks gray-blue as sea and ledge. 

Dancing upon the silvered edge 

Of darkness — each ecstatic one 

Making a happy orison. 

With shining limbs, to the low-sunken sun ? — 

1 At end of volume see note. 
55 



56 THE PRESENT HOUR 

See : now they cease 
Like nesting birds from flight : 
Demure and debonair 
They troop beside their hostess' chair 
To make their bedtime courtesies : 
" Spokoinoi notchi ! — Gute Nacht ! 
Bon soir ! Bon soir ! — Good night !^' 
\^Tiat far-gleaned lives are these 
Linked in one holy family of art ? — 
Dreams : dreams once Christ and Plato dreamed 
How fair their happy shades depart! 

Dear God 1 how simple it all seemed, 
Till once again 

Before my eyes the red type quivered : Slain : 
Ten thousand of the enemy. — 
Then laughter! laughter from the ancient sea 
Sang in the gloaming: Athens! Galilee! 
And elfin voices called from the extinguished light : 
" Spokoinoi notchi ! — Gute Nacht ! 
Bon soir! Bon soir! — Good night!'* 



BATTLEFIELDS 

On the battlefields of birth, 
Lulled from pain in twilight sleep, 

Languorous in calm reliance 

On the Christ-like soul of science. 
They whose patient soldiership 
Bore the age-old pangs of earth 
Till the patient seers of reason set them free — 

Volunteers, whose valiant warring 

Is the passion of restoring — 
Mothers, gentle mothers, bless you, Germany ! 

By the battlefields of death. 
Racked by prayers that never sleep, 

Anguished with a wild defiance 

Of the Satan powers of science. 
They whose loving guardianship 
Knit the subtle bonds of breath 
Till their sons of iron tore them ruthlessly — 

Victims, whose heart-blinding portion 

Is their victory's abortion — 

Mothers, maddened mothers, curse you, Germany 
57 



IN MEMORIAM 
Mrs. Woodrow Wilson 

Her gentle spirit passed with Peace — 
With Peace out of a world at war 

Racked by the old earth-agonies 
Of kaiser, king and czar, 

Where Bear and Lion crouch in lair 
To rend the iron Eagle's flesh 

And viewless engines of the air 
Spin wide their lightning mesh. 

And darkly kaiser, czar and king 

With awful thunders stalk their prey. — 

Yet Peace, that moves with silent wing, 
Is mightier than they. 

And she — our lady who has passed — 

And Peace were sisters : They are gone 

Together through time's holocaust 

To blaze a bloodless dawn. 
58 



INMEMORIAM 59 

How otherwise the royal die 

Whose power is throned on rolling drums ! 
Her monument of royalty 

Is builded in the slums : 

Her latest prayer, transformed to law, 
Shall more than monarch's vow endure, 

Assuaging there, with loving awe. 
The anguish of the poor. 



^^L^ 

^•^' 



^^ c^^^x^'y '^ -^-■-■■'^^:/^^v^'^^ '^ Ch^ K 



A PRAYER OF THE PEOPLES 

God of us who kill our kind I 
Master of this blood-tracked Mind 
Which from wolf and Caliban 
Staggers toward the star of Man — 
Now, on Thy cathedral stair, 
God, we cry to Thee in prayer I 

Where our stifled anguish bleeds 
Strangling through Thine organ reeds. 
Where our voiceless songs suspire 
From the corpses in Thy choir — 
Through Thy charred and shattered nave, 
God, we cry on Thee to save I 

Save us from our tribal gods ! 

From the racial powers, whose rods — 
60 



A PRAYER OF THE PEOPLES 61 



Wreathed with stinging serpents — stir 
Odin and old Jupiter 
From their ancient hells of hate 
To invade Thy dawning state. 

Save us from their curse of kings I 
Free our souls' imaginings 
From the feudal dreams of war; 
Yea, God, let us nevermore 
Make, with slaves* idolatry, 
Kaiser, king or czar of Thee! 

We who, craven in our prayer. 
Would lay off on Thee our care — 
Lay instead on us Thy load; 
On our minds Thy spirit's goad. 
On our laggard wills Thy whips 
And Thy passion on our lips ! 

Fill us with the reasoned faith 
That the prophet lies, who saith 



62 THE PRESENT HOUR 

All this web of destiny, 
Torn and tangled, cannot be 
Newly wove and redesigned 
By the Godward human mind. 

Teach us, so, no more to call 

Guidance supernatural 

To our help, but — heart and will — 

Know ourselves responsible 

For our world of wasted good 

And our blinded brotherhood. 

Lord, our God ! to whom, from clay. 

Blood and mire. Thy peoples pray — 

Not from Thy cathedral's stair 

Thou hearest : — Thou criest through our prayer 

For our prayer is but the gate: 

We, who pray, ourselves are fate. 



THE PRESENT HOUR 

II 

PEACE 



PANAMA HYMN 

Lord of the sundering land and deep, 
For whom of old, to suage thy wrath. 

The floods stood upright as a heap 
To shape thy host a dry-shod path, 

Lo, now, from tide to sundered tide 
Thy hand, outstretched in glad release. 

Hath torn the eternal hills aside 
To blaze a liquid path for Peace. 

Thy hand, englaived in flaming steel, 
Hath clutched the demons of the soil 

And made their forge-fires roar and reel 
To serve thy seraphim in toil; 

While round their pits the nations, bowed. 

Have watched thine awful enginery 

Compel, through thunderbolt and cloud. 

The demigods to slave for thee, 
p 65 



66 THE PRESENT HOUR 

For thee hath glaring Cyclops sweat, 
And Atlas groaned, and Hercules 

For thee his iron sinews set. 

And thou wast lord of Rameses; 

Till now they pause, to watch thy hand 
Lead forth the first leviathan 

Through mazes of the jungled land. 
Submissive to the will of man : 

Submissive through the will of us 

To thine, the universal will, 
That leads, divine and devious. 

To world-communions vaster still. — 

The titans rest; intense, aware, 
The host of nations dumbly waits; 

The mountains lift their brows and stare; 
The tides are knocking at the gates. 



PANAMA HYMN 67 



Almighty of the human mind. 
Unlock the portals of om- sleep 

That lead to visions of our kind. 
And marry sundered deep to deep! 



GOETHALS 

A MAN went down to Panama 

Where many a man had died 
To slit the sliding mountains 

And lift the eternal tide: 
A man stood up in Panama, 

And the mountains stood aside. 

The Power that wrought the tide and peak 

Wrought mightier the seer; 
And the One who made the isthmus 

He made the engineer, 
And the good God he made Goethals 

To cleave the hemisphere. 

The reek of fevered ages rose 
From poisoned jungle and strand. 

Where the crumbling wrecks of failure 
Lay sunk in the torrid sand — 

Derelicts of old desperate hopes 

And venal contraband: 
68 



GOETHALS 69 



Till a mind glowed white through the yellow mist 

And purged the poison-mold. 
And the wrecks rose up in labor. 

And the fevers' knell was tolled, 
And the keen mind cut the world-divide, 

Untarnished by world gold : 

For a poet wrought in Panama 

With a continent for his theme, 
And he wrote with flood and fire 

To forge a planet's dream. 
And the derricks rang his dithyrambs 

And his stanzas roared in steam. 

But the poet's mind it is not his 

Alone, but a million men's: 
Far visions of lonely dreamers 

Meet there as in a lens, 
And lightnings, pent by stormy time. 

Leap through, with flame intense: 



70 THE PRESENT HOUR 

So from our age three giants loom 
To vouch man's venturous soul : 

Amundsen on his ice-peak. 
And Peary from his pole. 

And midway, where the oceans meet, 
Goethals — beside his goal : 

Where old Balboa bent his gaze 

He leads the liners through. 
And the Horn that tossed Magellan 

Bellows a far halloo. 
For where the navies never sailed 

Steamed Goethals and his crew; 

So nevermore the tropic routes 

Need poleward warp and veer, 
But on through the Gates of Goethals 

The steady keels shall steer. 
Where the tribes of man are led toward peace 

By the prophet-engineer. 



A CHILD AT THE WICKET 

A LITTLE isle : it is for some 
Hell's gate, for some Elysium ! — 
Round Ellis Isle the salt waves flow 
With old-world tears, wept long ago; 

Round Ellis Isle the warm waves leap 
With new-world laughter from the deep. 
And centuries of sadness smile 
To clasp their arms round Ellis Isle. 



I watched her pass the crowded piers, 
A peasant child of maiden years ; 
Her face was toward the evening sky 
Where fair Manhattan towered high ; 

Her yellow kerchief caught the breeze. 

Her crimson kirtle flapped her knees. 

As lithe she swayed to tug the band 

Of swaddled bundle in her hand. 
71 



72 THE PRESENT HOUR 

From her right hand the big load swung. 
But with her left strangely she clung 
To something light, which seemed a part 
Of her, and held it 'gainst her heart: 

A something frail, which tender hands 
Had touched to song in far-off lands 
On twilights, when the looms are mute: 
A thing of love — a slender lute. 

Hardly she seemed to know she held 
That frail thing fast, but went compelled 
By wonder of the dream that lay 
In those bright towers across the bay. 

A staggering load, a treasure light — 
She bore them both, and passed from sight. 
From Ellis Isle I watched her pass: 
Pinned on her breast was Lawrence, Mass, 



A CHILD AT THE WICKET 73 

O little isle, you are for some 
Heirs gate, for some Elysium! 
Your wicket swings, and some to song 
Pass on, and some to silent wrong; 

But who, where hearts of toilers bleed 
In songless toil, ah, who will heed — 
On twilights, when the looms are mute — 
A thing of love, a slender lute? 



HYMN FOR EQUAL SUFFRAGE 

They have strewn the burning hearths of Man with 

darkness and with mire, 
They have heaped the burning hearts of Man with 

ashes of desire, 
Yet from out those hearts and hearths still leaps the 

quick eternal fire 

Whose flame is liberty. 

But the flame which once led deathward all the dazzled 

fighting hordes 
Lights them now to living freedom from the bondage 

of their lords, 
And our mothers are uprisen 'mid their sons to wrest 

the swords 

From hands of tyranny. 

For the freedom of the laborer is freedom from his toil, 

And freedom of the citizen is right to share the soil, 

And the freedom of our country is our loosing of the coil 

That chokes posterity. 
74 



HYMN FOR EQUAL SUFFRAGE 75 

So we who wage our devious wars, in fastness and in fen. 
Let us claim our common birthright in the living sun 

again. 
Till the battle of the beasts becomes the reasoning of 

men, 

And joy our destiny. 

Let us march then, all together, not because our leaders 

call. 
But at summons of the mighty soul of man within us all, 
Men and women, equal comrades, let us storm the 

nation's wall 

And cry "Equality!" 

For the vote that brings to woman and to man life's 

common bread. 
Is mightier than the mindless gun that leaves a million 

dead; 
And the rights of Man shall triumph where once men 

and women bled 

When mothers of men are free. 



LEXINGTON 

"Where is the little town of Lexington? 

Oh, I have lost my way !" — 
But all the brawling people hurried on : 

Why should they stay 
To watch a tattered boy, with wistful face. 
Dazed by the roaring strangeness of the place ? — 

In wondering scorn 
Turning, he tapped the powder from his powder-horn. 

" Where is my blood-bright hearth of Lexington ?" — 

Strangely the kindling cry 
Startled the crowded street; yet everyone 

Still scrambled by 
Into the shops and markets ; till at last 
Went by a pensive scholar. As he passed. 

Sudden, to whet 

Of steel, he heard a flint-lock flash : their faces met. 
76 



LEXINGTON 77 

"What like, then, is your little Lexington?" 

"Oh, sir, it is my home. 
Which I have lost." — The scholar's sharp eyes shone. 

" Come with me ! Come, 
And I will show you, old and hallowed, all 
Its maps and marks and shafts memorial." — 

Out of the roar 
They went, into green silence where old elm trees soar. 

" Here is your little town of Lexington : 

Let fall your eyes 
And read the old inscription on this stone : 

'Beneath this lies 
The first who fell in our dear country's fight 
For revolution and the freeman's right.'" 

The boy's eyes fell, 
But shining swiftly rose : " Yes, I remember well ! 

" Yet there lies not my lost home Lexington : 
For none who fall 



78 THE PRESENT HOUR 

At Lexington is buried under stone; 

And eyes of all 
Who fight at Lexington look up at God 
Not down upon His servants under sod 

Whose souls are sped; 
They lie who say in Lexington free men are dead." 

"My son, I said not so of Lexington. 

'There lie the bones,' 
I said, *of great men, and their souls are gone.' 

God sends but once 
His lightning-flash to strike the sacred spot. 
Our great sires are departed." — "They are not I 

I am alive. 
/ fought at Lexington ; you see, I still survive ! 

"And still I live to fight at Lexington. 

I am come far 
From Russian steppes and Balkan valleys, wan 

With ghostly war. 



LEXINGTON 79 

Where still the holy watchword in the fight 
Was Revolution and the freeman's right ! — 

Now I am come 
Back with that battle-cry to help my own dear home. 



" Here, here it lies — my lost home Lexington ! 

Not there in dust, 
But here in the great highway of the sun, 

Where still the lust 
Of arrogant power flaunts its regiments, 
And lurking hosts of tyranny pitch their tents. 

And still the yoke 
Of heavy-laden labor weighs on simple folk. 



"Our country cries for living Lexington! 

From mine and slum 
And hearths where man's rebellion still burns on. 

Rolls the deep drum : 



80 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Ah, not to elegize but emulate 

Is homage worthy of the heroic great, 

Whose memoried spot 
Serves but to quicken fire from ashes long forgot. 

"Here, then, O little town of Lexington, 

Burnish anew 
Our muskets for the battle long begun 

For freedom ! — You, 
O you, my comrades, called from all world-clans. 
Here, by the deeds of dear Americans 

That cannot die, 
Let Lexington be still our revolution-cry!" 



SCHOOL 

I 

Old Hezekiah leaned hard on his hoe 

And squinted long at Eben, his lank son. — 

The silence shrilled with crickets. Day was done. 

And, row on dusky row, 
Tall bean poles ribbed with dark the gold-bright after- 
glow. 
Eben stood staring: ever, one by one. 
The tendril tops turned ashen as they flared. 

Still Eben stared. 

Oh, there is wonder on New Hampshire hills. 

Hoeing the warm bright furrows of brown earth. 

And there is grandeur in the stone wall's birth. 

And in the sweat that spills 

From rugged toil is sweetness ; yet for wild young wills 

There is no dew of wonder, but stark dearth, 

In one old man who hoes his long bean rows. 

And only hoes. 

G 81 



82 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Old Hezekiah turned slow on his heel. 

He touched his son. — Through all the carking day 

There are so many littlish cares to weigh 

Large natures down, and steel 
The heart of understanding. — "Son, how is't ye 

feel? 
What are ye starin' on — a gal?" A ray 
Flushed Eben from the fading afterglow: 

He dropped his hoe. 

He dropped his hoe, but sudden stooped again 
And raised it where it fell. Nothing he spoke. 
But bent his knee and crack! the handle broke 

Splintering. With glare of pain. 
He flung the pieces down, and stamped upon them; 

then — 
Like one who leaps out naked from his cloak — 
Ran. — " Here, come back ! Where are ye bound — 
you fool?" 

He cried — "To school!" 



SCHOOL 83 



II 

Now on the mountain Morning laughed with light — 
With light and all the future in her face, 
For there she looked on many a far-off place 

And wild adventurous sight, 
For which the mad young autumn wind hallooed with 

might 
And dared the roaring mill-brook to the race, 
Where blue-jays screamed beyond the pine-dark pool — 

" To school ! — To school ! " 

Blackcoated, Eben took the barefoot trail. 

Holding with wary hand his Sunday boots ; 

Harsh catbirds mocked his whistling with their hoots ; 

Under his swallowtail 
Against his hip-strap bumping, clinked his dinner pail ; 
Frost maples flamed, lone thrushes touched their lutes ; 
Gray squirrels bobbed, with tails stiff curved to backs, 

To eye his tracks. 



84 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Soon at the lonely crossroads he passed by 
The little one-room schoolhouse. He peered in. 
There stood the bench where he had often been 

Admonished flagrantly 
To drone his numbers : Now to this he said good- 
bye 
For mightier lure of more romantic scene : 
Goodbye to childish rule and homely chore 

Forevermore I 

All day he hastened like the flying cloud 
Breathless above him, big with dreams, yet dumb. 
With tightened jaw he chewed the tart spruce 
gum. 

And muttered half aloud 
Huge oracles. At last, where through the pine-tops 

bowed 
The sun, it rose ! — His heart beat like a drum. 
There, there it rose — his tower of prophecy : 

The Academy I 



SCHOOL 85 



III 

They learn to live who learn to contemplate. 

For contemplation is the unconfined 

God who creates us. To the growing mind 

Freedom to think is fate, 
And all that agp and after-knowledge augurate 
Lies in a little dream of youth enshrined : 
That dream to nourish with the skilful rule 

Of love — is school. 

Eben, in mystic tumult of his teens, 

Stood bursting — like a ripe seed — into soul. 

All his life long he had watched the great hills roll 

Their shadows, tints and sheens 
By sun- and moon-rise; yet the bane of hoeing 

beans 
And round of joyless chores, his father's toll. 
Blotted their beauty; nature was as not: 

He had never thought. 



86 THE PRESENT HOUR 

But now he climbed his boyhood's castle tower 
And knocked : Ah, well then for his after-fate 
That one of nature's masters opened the gate, 

Where like an April shower 
Live influence quickened all his earth-blind seed to 

power. 
Strangely his sense of truth grew passionate, 
And like a young bull, led in yoke to drink, 

He bowed to think. 

There also bowed their heads with him to quaff — 
The snorting herd ! And many a wholesome grip 
He had of rivalry and fellowship. 

Often the game was rough, 
But Eben tossed his horns and never called it off ; 
For still through play and task his Dream would 

slip — 
A radiant Herdsman, guiding destiny 

To his degree. 



SCHOOL 87 



Once more old Hezekiah stayed his hoe 
To squint at Eben. Silent, Eben scanned 
A little roll of sheepskin in his hand, 

While, row on dusky row. 
Tall bean poles ribbed with dark the gold-bright after- 
glow. 
The boy looked up : Here was another land ! 
Mountain and farm with mystic beauty flared 

Where Eben stared. 

Stooping, he lifted with a furtive smile 

Two splintered sticks, and spliced them. Nevermore 

His spirit would go beastwise to his chore 

Blinded, for even while 
He stooped to the old task, sudden in the sunset's pile 
His radiant Herdsman swung a fiery door, 
Through which came forth with far-borne trumpetings 

Poets and kings. 



88 THE PRESENT HOUR 

His fellow conquerors : There Virgil dreamed, 
There Csesar fought and won the barbarous tribes. 
There Darwin, pensive, bore the ignorant gibes. 

And One with thorns redeemed 
From malice the wild hearts of men : there flared and 

gleamed 
With chemic fire the forges of old scribes. 
Testing anew the crucibles of toil 

To save God's soil. 

So Eben turned again to hoe his beans; 

But now, to ballads which his Herdsman sung. 

Henceforth he hoed the dream in with the dung, 

And for his ancient spleens 
Planting new joys, imagination found him means. — 
At last old Hezekiah loosed his tongue : 
" Well, boy, this school — what has it learned ye to 
know?" 

He said: "To hoe.'' 



THE PLAYER 

[Shakspere] 

His wardrobe is the world, and day and night 

His many-mirror' d dressing room : At dawn 

He apes the elvish faun. 

Or, garbed in saffron hose and scarlet shoon, 

Mimics the madcap sprite 

Of ever-altering youth ; at chime of noon 

He wears the azure mail and blazoned casque 

Of warring knighthood ; till, at starry stroke 

Of dark, all pale he dons his "inky cloak" 

And meditates — the waning moon his tragic mask. 

His theatre is the soul, and man and woman 

His infinite repertory : Age on age. 

Treading his fancy's stage. 

Ephemeral shadows of his master mind. 

We act our parts — the human 

Players of scenes long since by him designed; 

89 



90 THE PRESENT HOUR 

And stars, that blaze in tinsel on our boards, 

Shine with a moment's immortality 

Because they are his understudies, free 

For one aspiring hour to sound his magic chords. 

For not with scholars and their brain-worn scripts. 
Nor there behind the footlights' fading glow 
Shakspere survives : ah, no ! 
Deep in the passionate reality 
Of raging life above the darkling crypts 
Of death, he meditates the awed "To be 
Or not to be" of millions, yet to whom 
His name is nothing; there, on countless quests, 
Unlettered Touchstones quibble with his jests, 
Unlaureled Hamlets yearn, and anguished Lears up- 
loom. 

Leave, then, to Avon's spire and silver stream 
Their memory of ashes sung and sighed : 
Our Shakspere never died, 



THE PLAYER 91 

Nor ever was born, save as the god is born 
From every soul that dares to doubt and dream. 
He dreams — but is not mortal : eve and morn, 
Dirge and delight, float from his brow like prayer. 
Beside him, charmed Apollo lifts his lyre; 
Below, the heart of man smoulders in fire; 
Between the two he stands, timeless — the poet-player. 



TO JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

(On first reading her play "The Wolf of Gubbio") 

CoNJURESS, here 

YouVe poured, all clear, 

In a cup, a carven crystal cup — 

Pied with lights that flush and falter 

And flower again — 

All in a three-rimmed loving-cup 

Fit for the dear Madonna's altar, 

Where thieves and shrews and wolvish men 

And wondering children may come to sup — 

All in a cup, a shining cup, 

Held by the trembling paws and fingers 

Of your divine dog Era Lupone 

And him, his crony, 

Whose loving laughter lingers 

In the echo of song that bubbles so easy 

In syllabling: d'Assissi! d'Assissi! 
92 



JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 93 

Him, large white soul in the simple wee body — 

Pulsing, you've poured in a glowing cup 

For joy of our generations — 

Wine : wine distilled from the art 

And the sheen 

Of the mind and the heart 

Of Josephine 

Preston Peabody. — 

Fair befall her ! — Felicitations I 



PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO A BIRD 
MASQUE 

PROLOGUE 
Enter Fantasy, who speaks: 

Gentles, just now I met an elf 

Who crooked mid-air his finger joint 

To beckon me, poising himself 

Sheer on a shining question-point; 

And there he cried: ''Who may you be? 

Where are you bound, if one may ask? 

What are these birds that hold a masque? 

What is a masque? What witchery 

Can cause my woodland boughs to grace 

This walled and crowded shut-in place? 

How may divine Aurora rise 

Under a roof ? That parchment scroll — 

What's written there?" — I said: "Replies 

To elves like you, who claim their toll 

Of answers." So I cast my eyes 

Downward, and read this from my roll : 
94 



PROLOGUE 95 



I 

Follow me, Gentles ! Follow me 

By hidden paths, for I am Fantasy : — 

Between the ear and what is heard, 

Betwixt the eye and what is seen, 

Midway the poet and his word 

I hold my shadowy demesne. 

And there to-night I act a thing — 

Nor drama nor lyric but mid-v/ay — 

Wrought for my fairy folk to sing 

And real folk to play. 

Your nature critic does not ask 

Robin to nest with wren, 

Yet both are birds : Why argue, then. 

What drama is, or masque? 

My theatre's art is nature's, when 

It serves the creator's task. 



96 THE PRESENT HOUR 

II 

Then, follow me, Gentles, if you will ! 

To follow means but tarry still 

Here in your seats, for I will bring 

Horizons for your journeying. 

Till soon this many-murmured hall 

Shall be for you a silent wood. 

Where we may watch, through leafy solitude, 

Quercus the faun, and hear his echo call 

In sighing surds 

The vowel-bubbling birds. 

And spy where Dawn steals past with pale footfall. 

Ill 

Come, then, for this can only be 
If you will follow Fantasy. 
No magic is, except through me; 
Yet I myself can nothing do 
Alone; my radiance 'tis from you. 



PROLOGUE 97 



For if in woods I walk alone 

No light will be around me thrown; 

And if alone you walk the woods, 

Your eyes will blink through darkening hoods. 

IV 

Come, then, together let us go, 

As birds and men together meet 

Where boughs are dim and woodlands sweet 

With meditation. Meeting so. 

My simplest arts 

Will serve to please you, and unblind 

Your own rapt vision ; for kind hearts 

Need no compulsion to be kind 

To their own natures. So the mind 

Amongst you which shall act most feelingly 

My simple masque, and find the fewest flaws. 

Shall win my best award, and he (or she) 

Be showered by my players' glad applause. 



98 THE PRESENT HOUR 

EPILOGUE 

Gentles, if you have followed me, 
Now is no need to say goodbye; 
For we shall meet in revery 
Wherever glad birds sing and fly — 
Wherever sad birds bleed and dumbly die. 

Oh, where they mount on wings and song 
'Tis we who mount there — you and I ; 
And where they fall and suffer wrong 
'Tis we who perish — you and I : 
Our own is Ornis* pain or ecstasy. 

So, at fresh rise and set of sun. 

May Ornis bring her joy to you, each one. 

And Tacita her dreams ! — Our masque is done. 



THE SONG SPARROW 

When June was cool and clover long 
And birds were glad in soul and body, 

I sat me down to make a song, 
And sweltered in my study : 

I swinked and sweat with weary art 

To tell how merry was my heart. 

With weary art and wordy choice 

I toiled, when sudden — low and breezy • 

I heard a little friendly voice 
Call : Simple, simple, so easy ! 

I heard, yet sat apart in dole 

To sing how social was my soul. 

In vain ! — That artless voice went round 

In tiny echoes faint and teasy. 

I rose: "What toil then, have you found 

Simple, simple, so easyf" 
99 



100 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Dauntless, the bird, with dewy beak, 
Carolled again his cool critique. 

Nay, song it is a simple thing 
For hearts that seek no reason: 

Relentless bird, why should you sing 
Who are the happy season ? — 

Still why! The root of joy I seek. 

While laughter ripples from your beak. 

No wonder, then, the bard's pen creaks. 
The critic's drone grows wheezy. 

When joy the June bird never seeks 
Is simple, simple, so easy! 

While we, who find our art so long, 

Still make a subterfuge of song! 



TO AN UPLAND PLOVER 

Crescent-wing'd, sky-clean 
Hermit of pastures wild, 

Upland plover, shy-soul'd lover 
Of field ways undefiled ! 
I watch your curve-tipt pinion glean — 
Slim as a scythe — the rusty green 
Reaches of sweet-fern cover 
That slant to your secret glade, 
But what you cull with your rhythmic blade 
What mortal can discover? 

Azure-born, gale-blown 

Gull of the billowy hills. 

My heart goes forth to see you hover 

So far from human sills. 

To hear your tweeting, shrill and lone, 
101 



102 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Make from the moorgrass such sharp moan 

As some unshriven lover. 
For you are sorrow-wise 
With memory, whose passions rise 

Whence no man may discover. 

Reticent, rare of song. 

Rears the shy soul its pain : 

You sought no cottage eave as cover 
To dole a dulcet plain; 
But swift, on pinions lithe and strong, 
You sought a place for your wild wrong 
God only might discover, 
And there God, calling, came, 
And flies with you in His white flame — 
Your wilding mate, O plover I 



RAIN REVERY 

In the lone of night by the pattering tree 

I sat alone with Poetry — 

With Poetry, my old shy friend, 

And his tenuous shadow seemed to blend — 

Beyond the lampshine on the sill — 

With the mammoth shadow of the hill, 

And his breath fell soft on the pool-dark pane 

With the murmurous, murmuring muffled hoof 

Of the rain, the rain 

The rain on the roof. 

In the vast of night and its vacancy 

I prayed aloud to Poetry, 

And his luminous eyes grew large and dim 

As my heart-pulse quickened to question him; 

For out of that rumbling rhymeless rune 

He only might know, by a sense atune, 

103 



104 THE PRESENT HOUR 

To unravel the anguish, and render vain 
The remorseless will that wove the woof 
Of the rain, the rain 
The rain on the roof. 

So I cried : " What mute conspiracy 

Have you made with the night, O Poetry? 

Lover and friend of my warm doorway. 

Do you crouch there too on the storm-soaked clay ? 

Did you creep indoors when that gust of damp 

Raised the dead moon-moths round my lamp 

And the wan flame guttered ? — Hark, again I 

Do you ride there — so close, so aloof — 

With the rain, the rain 

The rain on the roof? 

"Ah, what of the rapture and melody 

We might have wrought, dear Poetry ! 

Imagined tower and dream-built shrine, 

Must they crumble in dark like this pale lampshine? 



RAINREVERY 105 

Our dawn-flecked meadows lyric-shrill, 

Shall they lie as dumb as the gloom-drenched hill? 

Our song-voiced lovers ! — Shall none remain ?" — 

Under the galloping, gusty hoof 

Answered the rain, rain 

Rain on the roof. 



THE HEART IN THE JAR 

A Meditation on the Nobel Prize Award for Medical 
Research, 1912 



Alive it beats in a bosom of glass — 

A glowing heart ! 

It has come to pass ! 

Ventricle, auricle. 

Artery quivering: 

No metaphorical 

Symbol of art, 

No cold, mechanical trick of a cog, 

But ardent — an organ mysterious. 

Alive, delivering 

Serene, continuous 

Pulses, poised in its chamber of glass. 

Beating — the heart of a dog ! 
106 



THE HEART IN THE JAR 107 

II 

And it came to pass 

While the hearts of men 

Were selling and buying 

The blood of their brothers, 

Then, even then — 

While grocer and draper 

And soldier were eying 

Their market-news in the morning paper. 

And, musing there among the others. 

Their poet of words 

Stood staring — his back to the laboratory 

(Where the poet of life 

Plied ether and knife) — 

Stood musing his rhymes for a miracle-story 

Of Babylon queens or Attic birds. 



108 THE PRESENT HOUR 

III 

Yet others were there more strange 

(More strange, as they spoke in the holy name 

Of the human heart, while still their eyes 

Were blind to the light love's visions range) — 

For they cried: "Lo, the dog — he dies! 

Spare him the knife ! What have ye done. 

Awarders of fame I Will you grant to one 

Who slaughters — the great world-prize?'* 

Yet these are the same 

Who cherish the deed and worship the pain 

Of saints that offered their blood in fire 

For the meed of men. 

And these are the same who bend the knee 

To One who hung on the bleeding tree 

Under the seraphim: 

In the name — in the hallowed name of Him 

Who raised us from Caliban, 

Would they grudge to a dog — what a god might aspire 

To render his heart for the Heart of Man ? 



THE HEART IN THE JAR 109 

IV 

How calm in its crystal tomb 

It beats to the mandate of life! 

How hush it waits in the sexless womb 

For the hour of its strange midwife — 

The seer, whose talismanic touch 

Shall give it birth in another — what? 

The heart of a dog once, was it not? 

So then, if it still be such, 

Why, then, the dog — (cur, thoroughbred, 

Mastiff, was it, or hound ?) — 

What of the dog ? — is he quick or dead ? 

His soul (as they used to say) 

In what Elysian field should he stray, 

Or where lie down in his grave? 

For hark ! — 

Through the clear concave 

Of the glass, that delicate pulsing sound I 

Ah, once, how it whirred in the flooded dark 

Of his deep-lunged chest, with rhythmic beat 



110 THE PRESENT HOUR 

To the wild curvet of his wonderful feet 

And the rapturous passion of his bark. 

As he welcomed his homing master's hand. 

To crouch at the quick command! 

Yet it never has ceased to beat : — 

Charmed by the poet of life. 

Freed by his art and the cunning knife 

That counterfoils the shears of fate, 

See it quiver now in that golden bar 

Of noon — unlaboring, isolate. 

Alive, in a crystal jar! 



The heart of a dog — why pause ? 

Why pause on your brink, bright jar? Or why 

This reticent allocution? 

A dog ! — Shall I stop at to-day, because 

To-morrow it might be I ? — 

Yea, and if it be! 

Even this heart of me 



THE HEART IN THE JAR 111 

The subtle bard of life with his blade 

To sever from out the mystic whole 

I have deemed my Soul 

And shatter me — like no cloven shade 

Divined by a Dante's ecstasy — 

In morsels to immortality. 

Piecemeal to dissolution ! 

This, then, that knocks at my breast — 
Starting at the image of its own inquest 
Hung in a gleaming jar — this sentient thing 
Responsive in the night 
To messages of grandeur and delight, 
Pensive to Winter, passionate to Spring, 
Mounting on strokes of music's rhythmic wing. 
Beating more swift when my beloved's cheek 
Ruddies with rapture the tongue fails to speak. 
And pausing quite 
When her rose turns to white — 
This servant, delicate to suffering. 



112 THE PRESENT HOUR 

Insurgent to restraint, soothed by redress, 
This shall the life-bard place upon his shelf 
Beside the dog — and both shall acquiesce. 

VI 

For he — artist of baffling life — himself 

Sculptor and plastic instrument — 

He holds within his hand the vast intent, 

And carves from out the crimson clay of death 

Incredible images 

Of quickening fauns, and headless victories 

More terrible than her of Samothrace, — 

Yea, toys with such as these, 

As, silent, he lifts a severed Gorgon *s face 

Toward his own; 

(The watchers hold their breath. 

Hiding their dread.) 

Calmly he looks — nor turns to stone, 

But with a touch freezes the sphinx instead. 

Till last, all pale, beside him — like a dream 



THE HEART IN THE JAR 113 

That rises into daylight out of sleep — 

Death rises from the mystic, crimson stream 

And murmurs at his ear: "What, then, am I? 

And what art thou whose scalpel strikes so deep 

To slay me? Yea, I felt it glance me by 

And I am wounded ! Give it me ! " — They clutch : 

Death snatches, and his frozen fingers touch 

The scalpel's edge — when lo, a lightning gleam 

Ruddies their wrestling shadows on the night; 

Immense they lengthen down the vasty gloom 

And darken in their height 

The rafters of a silent room : 

Around its walls, ranged in the crystal jars 

Of infinite stars. 

Beat, as they burn, the myriad hearts of life; 

In lordship, where their lonely shadows loom. 

Death and the Artist grapple for the knife. 



NOTES 



Of the poems collected in this volume, those in 
Part I (War) have been written during the last ten 
weeks; those in Part II (Peace) have been selected 
from poems written during the last two years — 
chiefly during 1914. Most of them have been pub- 
lished, separately, in the following journals and 
newspapers, to the editors of which the author 
makes his acknowledgments: Tfie North American 
Review^ Collier^s Weeklyj The Outlook, The Forum, 
The Independent, The Boston Evening Transcript, The 
New York Times and Times Literary Supplement, The 
New York Evening Post. 

New York City, 

October 26, 1914. 



116 



NOTES 

Most of tlie poems in this volume were written for 
special occasions. These notes record the dates and events 
which called forth their expression, as follows : — 

I: War 

Fight : written for the centenary celebration of the 
naval battle of Plattsbm'gh, and read by the author at 
Plattsburgh, N.Y., September 11. 1914. 

In the naval battle of Plattsburgh, the American com- 
mander "Macdonough himself worked Hke a common 
sailor, in pointing and handling a favorite gun. While 
bending over to sight it, a round shot cut in two the 
spanker boom, which fell on his head and struck him sense- 
less for two or three minutes; he then leaped to his feet 
and continued as before, when a shot took off the head of the 
captain of the gun crew and drove it in his face with such 
force as to knock him to the other side of the deck^ 

The above quotation is from ** The Naval War of 1812," 
by Theodore Roosevelt. 

The Conflict : These six sonnets here printed were 
originally published, together, in the Boston Evening 
Transcript, August 29, 1914. The first, "To WilUam 
Watson," is a response to a sonnet by Mr. Watson entitled 
" To the United States," first pubhshedin The London Post, 
and cabled to the New York Times. 

The Lads of Liege : First printed in the New York Times, 
September 2, 1914. 

Carnage : These six sonnets were first published, together, 
in the Boston Evening Transcript, September 26, 1914. 

The MufSed Drums : These stanzas (published in the 
New York Evening Post, September 3, 1914) were written 
117 



118 THE PRESENT HOUR 

with reference to the Peace Procession of Women in New- 
York City, August 29, 1914. 

Antwerp: The early press accounts of the storming of 
Antwerp by the Germans told of great damage to the city's 
architecture. Later accounts have described a less amount 
of physical injury inflicted. This sonnet, however, has refer- 
ence less to the physical violence, than to the spiritual 
violation wrought by unwarranted invaders. 

Men of Canada : First printed in the Boston Evening Tran- 
script, October 17, 1914, shortly after the sailing of Canadian 
troops to England. 

The Child-Dancers: The httle children of the Isadora 
Duncan School of Dancing, to whom these verses refer, 
came to America in September, owing to conditions of war 
in France. Russian, German, French, and EngUsh, they 
form a happy and harmonious family of the belhgerent 
races. 

A Prayer of the Peoples: This poem was written on the day 
of President Wilson's Call to Prayer, Sunday, October 4, 
1914. It was published in the New York Times, on October 
fifth. 

In Memoriam : Mrs. Woodrow Wilson : These stanzas were 
first printed in the New YorTc Evening Post, August 13, 
1914. Shortly before her death, the earnest, expressed 
wish of Mrs. Wilson for the passing of the law for the 
betterment of conditions in the slum district of Wash- 
ington was fulfilled by vote of the Senate. 

II: Peace 

Panama Hymn: Sung by a chorus at the Panama 
Festival for the benefit of the New York Association for 
the Blind, New York City, March 25, 1913, for which 
occasion the hymn was written. It was published in the 
North American Review, April, 1913. 



NOTES 119 



Goethals: written for the National Testimonial to 
Colonel George W. Goethals, and read by the author at 
Carnegie Hall, New York City, March 4, 1914. 

A Child at the Wicket : This poem, which narrates a 
true experience of the author at Ellis Island, refers by 
implication to the now historic labor troubles at Law- 
rence, Mass., in 1912. 

Hymn for Equal Suffrage: Written for the Equal 
Suffrage Meeting (Authors' Night) held at Cooper Union, 
New York City, in January 1914, and read by the author 
on that occasion. The poem is based on one of a like 
nature in the writer's play " Mater." 

Lexington : Written for the two hundredth anniversary 
of the incorporation of the town of Lexington, and read 
at Lexington, Mass., June 8, 1913. 

School: Written for the centenary celebration of the 
founding of Meriden Academy, and read by the author at 
Meriden, N.H., June 25, 1913. 

The Player: written for the celebration of the three 
hundredth anniversary of the birth of Shakspere, and 
read by Mr. Douglas Wood at the ceremonies beside Shak- 
spere's statue in Central Park, New York City, April 23, 
1914. 

Prologue and Epilogue to a Bird Masque: Thesewere 
written for the indoor performance of the author's Bird 
Masque " Sanctuary " in New York City, at the Hotel 
Astor Ballroom Theatre, February 24, 1914. On that 
occasion they were recited by Mrs. Charles Douville 
Coburn (in the r61e of Fantasy), who has since made use 
of them in the performances of the Masque by the Coburn 
Players at various American universities. 

The Heart in the Jar: written at the time of the an- 
nouncement of the award, to Dr. Alexis Carrel, of the 
Nobel Prize for Medical Research, and published in the 
New York Times Literary Supplement, December 8, 1912. 



'T^HE following pages contain advertisements of 
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OTHER WORKS BY PERCY MACKAYE 



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explicable story in profane history." — Philadelphia Ledger. 

The Canterbury Pilgrims 

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" This is a comedy in four acts, — a comedy in the higher and bet- 
ter meaning of the term. It is an original conception worked out with 
a rare degree of freshness and buoyancy, and it may honestly be called 
a play of unusual interest and unusual literary merit. . . . The 
drama might well be called a character portrait of Chaucer, for it 
shows him forth with keen discernment, a captivating figure among 
men, an intensely human, vigorous, kindly man. ... It is a moving, 
vigorous play in action. Things go rapidly and happily, and, while 
there are many passages of real poetry, the book is essentially a 
drama." — St. Paul Dispatch. 



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OTHER WORKS BY PERCY MACKA YE — Continued 



A Garland to Sylvia 

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"... contains much charming poetry." — New York Post. 

Sappho and Phaon 

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" Mr. Mackaye's work is the most notable addition that has been 
made for many years to American dramatic literature. It is true 
poetic tragedy . . . charged with happy inspiration ; dignified, elo- 
quent, passionate, imaginative, and thoroughly human in its emo- 
tions, . . . and whether considered in the light of literature or drama, 
need not fear comparison with anything that has been written by 
Stephen Phillips or John Davidson. . . . Masterfully written with 
deep pathos and unmistakable poetic power." — New York Evening 
Post. 

Mater : An American Study in Comedy 

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" Mr. Mackaye's Mater is a thing of pure delight. It is prose, but 
a prose filled with poetic fire. Only a poet could have conceived and 
written a play in which the elements of seriousness and laughter are 
so admirably blended. . . . The dialogue throughout shows Mr. 
Mackaye at his best : there is in it Hfe and light, quick movement, 
and outpouring of song." — Book News Monthly. 

Fenris, the Wolf 

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*' A drama that shows triple greatness. There is the supreme 
beauty of poetry, the perfect sense of dramatic proportion, and nobility 
of purpose. It is a work to dream over, to make one see glorious pic- 
tures, — a work to uplift to soul heights through its marvellously wrought 
sense appeal." — Examiner. 



The Scarecrow 

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" A delightful and significant piece of philosophical satire ; . . . a 
drama which is full of imagination, and well worthy a place in our 
literature." — New York Mail. 



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The Complete Poetical Works of 
Geoffrey Chaucer 

Now first put into Modern English by 

JOHN S. P. TATLOCK 

Author of " The Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works," etc., 

AND 

PERCY MACKAYE 
Author of " The Canterbury Pilgrims," " Jeanne D'Arc," etc. 

New and cheaper edition, with illustrations in black and white 

Cloth, 8vo, $2.00 net ; leather^ boxed, $J.oo net 

The publication of The Modern Reader''s Chancer is a pro- 
nounced success. Presenting as it does the stories of the great 
bard in language that twentieth century readers unversed in Old 
English can understand and enjoy, it opens up a rich store of 
fascinating literature. This cheaper edition of the work is de- 
signed with the purpose of still further increasing its usefulness. 
It departs in no way from the original except in the matter of 
illustrations, all of which are rendered in black and white. The 
binding, too, is simpler, being uniform with the binding of the 
one volume edition of The Modern Reader''s Bible. The text 
remains unchanged. 

" The version not only maintains the spirit and color, the rich 
humor and insight into human nature, of the original, but is of 
itself a literary delight." — The Argottaut. 

" Those who have at times attempted to struggle through the 
original text with the aid of a glossary, will welcome this new 
form." — Graphic, Los Angeles. 

" Chaucer is now readable by hundreds where before he was 
not accessible to dozens. The book is a veritable mine of good 
stories. . . . The volume can be heartily recommended to all 
lovers of the lasting and the permanent in literature." — Ke7itucky 
Post. 

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NEW POEMS AND PLAYS 



Philip, the King and other Poems 

By JOHN MASEFIELD 

Clothy i2mo, $1.25 net 

Mr. Masefield's new poetical drama again affirms his impor- 
tant position in the literature of to-day. In the volume are new 
poems of the sea, lyrics and a powerful poem on the present war. 

Plaster Saints 

By ISRAEL ZANGWILL 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.2$ net 
A new play of deep social significance. 

The Melting Pot 

By ISRAEL ZANGWILL 

Revised edition. Cloth, i2mo. 
This is a revised edition of what is perhaps Mr. Zangwill's 
most popular play. Numerous changes have been made in the 
text, which has been considerably lengthened thereby. The 
appeal of the drama to the readers of this country is particularly 
strong, in that it deals with that great social process by which all 
nationalities are blended together for the making of the real 
American. 

Makers of Madness 

By HERMANN HAGEDORN 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.00 net 

Many consider Mr. Hagedom the most representative poet 

of the American spirit. Here he has written a stirring drama in 

which are revealed the horror and the pathos of the great struggle 

in Europe. 



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NEW POEMS AND PLAYS 



Earth Triumphant and Other Tales 
in Verse 



By CONRAD AIKEN 

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Conrad Aiken is one of the first American writers to choose 
to tell his stories in verse. Helston, Masefield, and other Euro- 
peans have been doing it with marked success, but hitherto this 
country has had no notable representative in this line of endeavor. 
Though Mr. Aiken has been writing for a number of years, Earth 
Triumphant and Other Tales in Verse is his first published book. 
In it are contained, in addition to the several narratives of m.od- 
em life, a number of shorter lyrics. It is a volume distinguished 
by originality and power. 



Van Zom: A Comedy in Three Acts 

By EDWIN A. ROBINSON 

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This play makes delightful reading and introduces in the person 
of its author a playwright of considerable promise. Mr. Robin- 
son tells a modern story, one which by a clever arrangement of 
incident and skillful characterization arouses strongly the reader's 
curiosity and keeps it unsatisfied to the end. The dialogue is 
bright and the construction of the plot shows the work of one 
well versed in the technique of the drama. 



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RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S NEW DRAMA 



The King of the Dark Chamber 

By 

RABINDRAI^TATH TAGORE 

Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 19 13; Author of "Gitan- 
gaH," "The Gardener/' "The Crescent Moon," 
" Sadhana," " Chitra," " The Post-Office," etc. Cloth 
12 mo, $1.25 neL 

"The real poetical imagination of it is unchangeable; 

the allegory, subtle and profound and yet simple, is cast 

into the form of a dramatic narrative, which moves with 

imconventional freedom to a finely impressive climax; and 

the reader, who began in idle curiosity, finds his intelligence 

more and more engaged until, when he turns the last page, 

he has the feeling of one who has been moving in worlds 

not realized, and communing with great if mysterious 

presences." 

The London Globe. 



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A LIST OF PLAYS 



Leonid Andreyev's Anathema $1.25 net 

Clyde Fitch's The Climbers '. .75 net 

Girl with the Green Eyes 1.25 net 

Her Own Way [^^ ng|. 

Stubbornness of Geraldine * * 7 r net 

The Truth , [ [ .'^^ SS 

Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. 3 Parts. Each 1.50 net 

Hermann Hagedom's Makers of Madness 1. 00 net 

Henry Arthur Jones's 

Whitewashing of Julia ^yp net 

Saints and Sinners l-^c f,gt 

The Crusaders [ [^^ net 

Michael and His Lost Angel '.75 net 

Jack London's Scorn of Women 1.25 net 

Theft .' i.*25net 

Mackaye's Jean D 'Arc 1,25 net 

Sappho and Phaon 1.25 net 

Fenris the Wolf 1*25 net 

^^^fu • -D-i • i.'25net 

Canterbury Pilgrims 1,25 net 

The Scarecrow 1.25 net 

A Garland to Sylvia i! 25 net 

John Masefield's The Tragedy of Pompey 1.25 net 

Philip, the King 1.25 net 

William Vaughn Moody's 

The Faith Healer 1 . 25 net 

Stephen Phillip's Ulysses 1,25 net 

The Sin of David 1,25 net 

g.^r° -^e- • 1-25 net 

Pietro of Siena i , 00 net 

Phillips and Carr. Faust 1,25 net 

Edward Sheldon's The Nigger 1.25 net 

Romance 1. 25 net 

Katrina Trask's In the Vanguard 1.25 net 

Rabindranath Tagore's The Post Office i . 00 net 

Chitra 1, 00 net 

The King of the Dark Chamber 1.25 net 

Robinson, Edwin A. Van Zorn i . 25 net 

Sarah King Wiley's Coming of Philibert 1.25 net 

Alcestis 75 net 

Yeats's Poems and Plays, VoL II, Revised Edition 2.00 net 

Hour Glass (and others) 1.25 net 

The Green Helmet and Other Poems 1.25 net 

Yeats and Lady Gregory's Unicom from the Stars 1.50 net 

Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot. New Edition i 25 net 

The War God 1.25 net 

The Next Religion 1.25 net 

Plaster Saints 1.25 net 



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IIRRARY OF CONGRESS 

015 929 166 2 W. 



